Murder Among Children

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Not necessarily. I don’t think any of us should report it. Sooner or later someone else will find him and call the police. We may not be connected to it at all, at least not right away. Maybe there’ll be time enough for me to find the one responsible.”

  He pursed his lips. “I don’t doubt your ability, Mr. Tobin,” he said. “But I do wonder about your attentiveness. When you were here before your mind was divided. Is it still?”

  “Of course. But I’ll do the best I can.”

  “It bothers me to leave that man out there unattended.”

  “You wanted me to tell you not to report it,” I said. “Otherwise, you would have called the police yourself first thing, and me second.”

  “Are you right?” He cocked his head, as though listening to something far away, and then nodded. “Yes, you are. Good. Your divided mind is nevertheless perceptive.”

  “I hope so. May I use your phone?”

  “Of course. Brother William will show you.”

  “Thank you.”

  I followed Brother William down the length of the chapel and through the remembered door, the small conversation room, and this time into another small room with desk, chair, filing cabinet. On the desk were typewriter and telephone.

  Brother William said, “If you can keep the police away from us, brother, God bless you.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Police don’t understand the bishop,” he said. “They look for evil motives in him.”

  “It’s the result of their occupation,” I said, and thought to myself that was an odd thing to say. Did it defend the police, or did it attack them? I wasn’t sure.

  Brother William said, “You’ll want privacy,” and went out, shutting the door.

  I hadn’t necessarily required privacy, but I didn’t mind it. I phoned home and spoke to Kate. She asked me how things were going, and I said, “It’s not done yet. I want to talk to Robin. Can you call her mother and arrange it?”

  “I can try.”

  “And call me back.” I read the number to her from the phone and she promised to call back in a few minutes.

  I spent the time idly going through the desk and filing cabinet. This religious group was present in the situation, but not necessarily involved. They had provided the location, by rental, of the first two murders. The fifth had taken place outside their door. They had also been harassed by Donlon, in the same way as Thing East. Did their connection with the murderer go any deeper?

  There was nothing of interest in the drawers I went through. Housekeeping matters, mostly: food purchases, tax affairs, insurance, things like that. Even a religion has its business side, and here it was.

  The phone had not yet rung when I was finished. I sat at the desk and waited, and two or three minutes later it did ring and I answered.

  Kate. She said, “I’m sorry I took so long.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Rita’s going up there at four. She says two relatives are allowed in, and Robin’s father was going to go, but he’ll wait and go this evening.”

  “Where am I supposed to meet her?”

  “At the desk. She says she’ll be there at four.”

  I hadn’t seen my cousin Rita Gibson for years, for so long that I couldn’t manage to think of her as Rita Kennely, though obviously that had to be her married name. I said, “How will I know her?”

  “She’ll know you, Mitch.”

  “If you say so. Don’t count on me for dinner.”

  “I wasn’t. Be careful, Mitch.”

  “I will.” I hadn’t told her about the attempt on my life, it seemed pointless to worry her until this thing was over. Then it wouldn’t be a worry, and I could tell her. No, then it wouldn’t matter any more, and I wouldn’t bother to tell her.

  I wanted desperately to give this up and go home.

  We exchanged good-byes, I hung up, and I got heavily to my feet and went back to the chapel, where Bishop Johnson was talking with Hulmer. Brother William was nowhere in sight.

  I sat down next to the bishop and said, “Brother William told me you’d had some trouble with Donlon in the past. When you were in the old building.”

  “We did. He tried our patience sorely. We don’t believe that God treats the world like a Monopoly game, so we don’t believe that troubles are sent by God as tests of faith, but there were times when it did seem as though Detective Donlon had to be the emissary of something supernatural. The man’s instinct for harassment was uncanny.”

  “Did you ever complain to his superiors?”

  “That would not be our way.”

  “Passive resistance?”

  “Say, rather, passive acceptance. We survived Detective Donlon’s provocations, though with some gritting of teeth.”

  “Exactly how did he go about provoking you?”

  “We have residents,” he said, “several men and women for whom the world has been too much struggle. They have retired, perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently, and spend their lives here in thought. It was Detective Donlon’s practice to question these people, demand of them proof of identification, challenge the sincerity of their convictions, and so on. The same individuals would have to show him proof of identification time after time after time.”

  “How did your residents react?”

  He smiled thinly. “In a variety of ways,” he said. “Some with strong urges toward physical violence, some with sardonic fatalism, some with welcome.”

  “Welcome?”

  “They were pleased at the opportunity to test their strength against a real trial.”

  “Did any ever fail? Anybody ever take a poke at him, or threaten to report him, anything like that?”

  He smiled again, shaking his head. “Still looking for your murderer within these walls, Mr. Tobin? No, no one ever failed.” Then a shadow crossed his face and he said, “I’m wrong. There was one failure. At least I attribute the failure in large part to Detective Donlon’s harassment.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “He was a man who had been a drug addict, and Detective Donlon somehow learned that. After which, of course, he would never leave the poor man alone. He was constantly after him for names from his past, other addicts, suppliers. The man finally fled us and eventually returned to narcotics. It might have happened in any event, but I have always believed that Detective Donlon was the main reason for his failure.”

  “Where is this man now?”

  “He killed himself. Many addicts do, you know. The purpose of the narcotic is to create a wall against despair, and the day despair breaches that wall the addict no longer has anywhere to hide.”

  I said, “Are most of your residents former addicts?”

  “Not at all. This isn’t a halfway house. There may be one or two at the moment, but the New World Samaritans has nothing to do with narcotic addiction.”

  I said, “To be honest with you, I’m troubled about Donlon being killed here, in front of your church. And the first two murders in your old church. Your group is bound up in this thing some way.”

  “No mysterious way, Mr. Tobin. I believe Detective Donlon was here because you were here and he had followed you. Perhaps the murderer in turn followed Detective Donlon. Brother William told me that after you left, Detective Donlon went away for a while and then returned. In fact, Brother William was afraid he might have been aware of your departure through the rear door and so might be following you again, after all.”

  “Was Donlon ever inside this building?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  I shook my head. “There’s still too much I don’t understand,” I said.

  “I believe you know your work well,” the bishop said. “I am confident understanding will come to you.”

  “I hope you’re right.” I got to my feet. “Thank you for calling me instead of the police.”

  “You already pointed out my ulterior motive in that,” he said, smiling at me.

  “Thank you anyway.”r />
  “Would you call me if you learn anything?”

  “Certainly.”

  I nodded to Hulmer, and we went on outside. Out in the sunlight Hulmer said, “Is he blind?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so, but with the shades it was tough to tell.”

  “Is this the first you’ve ever seen him?”

  “Yeah. Abe and Terry did all the business talk with him. Neither of them ever said he was blind. But they wouldn’t.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “The bishop? I don’t know, I guess he’s a saint. If you believe in saints, I mean.”

  “Then you don’t think the killer’s somewhere in that building.”

  “One of the Samaritans?” He shook his head. “Not a chance, Mr. Tobin.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  We got into Hulmer’s car and he made a U-turn and headed uptown. As we drove by the black car containing Donlon’s corpse, I saw a group of children standing around the curbside door, looking in the window, pointing, talking to one another, beginning to be excited.

  20

  ROBIN WAS IN A ROOM that smelled not at all of hospital. There was a bed, but nevertheless the effect the room gave was of prison. Bars on the windows, a uniformed guard at the door, flat gray walls, bleakness in the furniture and in the air.

  And in Robin’s face. She looked thinner, and the skin around her eyes was dark, olive with anxiety and something close to despair.

  Despair was her cloak now, protecting her from the cold wind of reality. She tried to hide it, for her mother’s sake, with smiles and animation, but the mimicry was flat, a poor counterfeit for the real thing.

  It was painful to watch the two of them, the daughter pretending to be alive and the mother pretending to believe the daughter’s pretense. I spent the first few minutes standing in the background, letting them have each other uninterrupted for at least a little while, and the shakiness of their portrayals for one another’s benefit glared from every word, every gesture, every ripped smile.

  Rita Gibson—no, Rita Kennely—was a total stranger to me. Nothing in her ordinary plumpish middle-aged face reminded me of any face from my youth. She had dressed herself in the sort of clothing that wage-earner wives buy themselves every fifth Easter, lavenders and pinks and plums which fade with the spring and are somehow gray despite their colors before the last of the Easter dinner leftovers are out of the refrigerator. It was too warm for the weather outside, so she had arrived looking uncomfortable and distressed, and now that added a note of irrelevant physical discomfort to the strain she was obviously feeling in her daughter’s presence.

  She had picked me out at once in the waiting room downstairs, and had tried to make small talk—the weather, the subway—until I told her, “We don’t have to talk.”

  She looked at me with sudden surprise and gratitude. “Thank you,” she said.

  We had to be passed by a uniformed policeman outside the elevator on Robin’s floor. He didn’t like my presence, but Mrs. Kennely—I couldn’t possibly think of her as Rita—assured him I was a relative, and at last he passed us through, with a white pasteboard pass for each of us.

  Walking down the hall, Mrs. Kennely said, without looking at me, “I know you’ve had your own troubles the last few years, Mitch. I don’t blame you for not wanting to be involved in this. I’m sorry I came to your house and tried to force you to help.”

  “At the time,” I said, “I didn’t think there was any way I could help. There still might not be any way.”

  “I’m praying,” she said. “Morning and night, I’m praying to God to give you guidance.”

  We showed our pasteboards to the guard at the door, he unlocked it, and now we were inside, me standing as unobtrusively as possible in a corner while mother and daughter strained to hide their interlocking truths from one another.

  Robin had barely looked at me at all, and I wasn’t entirely sure she remembered who I was. When Mrs. Kennely finally said, “Dear, Mitch Tobin wants to talk to you, too,” Robin turned her head and looked at me with the patient solemnity of a bludgeoned child.

  I said, “How are you, Robin?”

  “Fine,” she said, in her thin voice.

  It was a foolish question, and a mechanical answer, but I’d had to say something and I wasn’t prepared. Actually, my main object in coming here was already satisfied: I’d wanted to know how well Robin was protected. The murderer was striking out in all directions now, terrified of something I couldn’t yet see, and at any time he might decide he’d made a mistake in leaving Robin Kennely alive, a witness who at any instant might unlock the knowledge stored inside her head. He had taken a calculated risk with her, knowing that if she did remember the truth at some later date it was unlikely to be believed, but in the time since then he had perhaps grown less fond of taking risks. If he could somehow get himself in here, murder Robin in some way to look like either accident or suicide, and then get himself out again unobserved, then he could breathe easy. There would be no trial of Robin, no further investigation, no possibility that the witness would later remember the truth.

  So I’d wanted to know the likelihood of his managing that, getting in and out of here, and it now seemed to me to be very unlikely. There were enough guards and enough checkpoints to make it just about impossible for anyone to get in unobserved.

  Unless, of course, our murderer was a cop. The junkie cop, Irene’s friend. Who had been involved somehow with Donlon.

  But I’d think about that later. For now, Robin was standing in the middle of the room watching me, polite and patient and withdrawn. I said, “Can you talk about that morning, Robin, or does it upset you?”

  She made a thin smile and shook her head. “It doesn’t upset me,” she said. “I just don’t remember it.”

  “Where does your memory stop? When you went upstairs?”

  “No, sir. I don’t remember anything about that morning.”

  “Nothing at all? Not getting up? Not riding in the car with Terry and George?”

  “Nothing at all. People have told me about it, so I know about it, but I don’t really remember anything.”

  “What about afterward? Do you remember seeing me when you came downstairs?”

  “You, sir?” She frowned at me. “No, I don’t remember anything at all until I woke up here. I went to bed the night before, I fell asleep, and I woke up here.” She smiled wanly at her mother, saying, “That was a scary moment.”

  I said, “Have any doctors talked to you?”

  “You mean psychiatrists? Oh, sure.” She frowned at me again and said, “Were you there? At Thing East.”

  “Yes. When you came downstairs.”

  “Why?”

  “Why was I there? You asked me to come.”

  “I did? I’m sorry, but I really don’t remember. Was it that morning?”

  “No. The day before. You came out to the house. Don’t you remember that either?”

  “What house?”

  “My house.”

  The mother was looking more and more distraught, and now she broke in, saying, “Robin, darling, are you tired? Should you rest? We can come back some other—”

  “No, really,” Robin said. “I want to know about this.” Looking at me, she said, “I don’t really know who you are. You do look familiar, but I don’t remember ever seeing you before in my life.”

  Mrs. Kennely, her voice edging toward shrillness, said, “He’s your cousin, dear. Your cousin Mitchell Tobin. You remember, the man who used to be a policeman.”

  I said, “You wanted me to talk to Donlon.”

  “Who?”

  I felt a sudden chill. I said, “You don’t remember Donlon either?”

  Flustered, frightened, still trying to maintain the brave front for her mother’s sake, Robin looked back and forth at the two of us, a scared smile on her face, and said, “What’s the matter with me? Do I have amnesia? I remember you, Mama. I remember everybody. I
t’s just that morning.”

  “And me,” I said. “And Donlon. Why do you suppose you can’t remember either of us? Is it because we’re both policemen?”

  “Are you a policeman?”

  “I used to be. Do you know the name Irene Boles?”

  “Of course. That’s the girl they say I killed.”

  “Do you remember what she looked like?”

  She shook her head.

  I said, “Robin, do you think you killed them?”

  Her eyes widened, the silence stretched between us, and abruptly she began to cry. She half staggered backward, her hands to her face, until she bumped into the bed, and then sat heavily and turned her face away. Her weeping sounded like metal ripping.

  Mrs. Kennely was staring at me, wide-eyed, on the verge of some indignant foolishness. I made a hand motion at her which I hoped she would interpret as I-know-what-I’m-doing, and she subsided a little, watching her daughter worriedly, casting apprehensive glances at me.

  I let the girl cry until the first violence of it was over and she would be able to listen to me, and then I went and sat beside her on the bed and said, “You didn’t do it. I know that for sure.”

  She had lowered her hands from her face, but she made no response to me. She kept turned away, head bowed. Still, I felt that she was listening. I said, “The police don’t know it yet, but they soon will.”

  In a very small voice she said, “I was up there.”

  “Yes. And because you’d gone into shock the murderer decided to let you live and take the blame for his crime. But it won’t happen that way.”

  She said something too low for me to hear.

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘Kill me.’”

  “Who did?”

  “The red man.”

  Mrs. Kennely burst in with “Mitch, leave the child alone! Can’t you see she’s—”

  I waved violently at her to shut up, but it was too late. Robin had turned to face us, looking only pale and weak, once again bravely smiling. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I just have to cry sometimes.”

  I said, “What else did the red man say?”

  She looked at me without comprehension. “What?”